Can water sommeliers convince us to pay more for premium H2O?

To many people, water is just water – a drink necessary for survival. To Lodovico Di Gioia, it’s much more.

The native of Italy works as a water sommelier at Danone SA, a major bottler of mineral water whose brands include Evian, Volvic and Badoit. Much like a connoisseur of fine wines, Di Gioia has a trained palette, but his is attuned to the subtle but distinctive tastes and textures of H?O.

He first holds a glass of water up to the light to look for any visible sediments, then checks for odours like sulphur from volcanic springs. He listens to the crackle and pop of bubbles in sparkling water, which “should sound like pieces of ice clashing together,” he says. Next there’s the taste – with salty, crisp or sweet notes – and what Di Gioia calls “mouthfeel,” which varies depending on the minerals the water has accumulated during its journey through the Earth.

Di Gioia tests waters that Danone can bottle and sell to consumers, preferably at a premium price. To that end, he spends much of his time sampling them from springs across Europe and beyond. He’s one of four such sommeliers at the company, a group that’s grown over the last decade. He earned his certificate from The Doemens Academy, a food and beverage school in Germany, which launched water sommelier accreditation in 2011. (It’s become popular enough that courses in English, Mandarin and Spanish have been made available in recent years). Di Gioia uses his expertise to frame narratives – typically around healthfulness, purity and respect for nature – that will persuade people to spend on something that often flows from the tap for free.

“It’s not just about quality control,” he says. “It’s really about supporting the development and the communication around the water.”

Mineral water is big business, and companies are constantly vying to win market share. Nestlé SA, whose waters include Perrier, San Pellegrino and Acqua Panna, says that it doesn’t have in-house sommeliers but that some of its brands work with them regularly.

“The more consumers understand that we have a unique source, a unique way of managing the source – the most natural mineral water in the world – the more we sell at a high price,” Juergen Esser, Danone’s deputy chief executive officer, told analysts on a call last year.

The water business, the smallest of Danone’s three divisions, generated about €5 billion ($5.8 billion) in 2024 sales. Its growth has slowed in recent quarters amid intense competition and growing concerns over the environmental impact of producing, transporting and drinking from single-use plastic bottles. And now the boom in weight-loss drugs may present a further headwind to growth, as early research indicates users of the wildly popular medications tend to drink less water than before, says Isabelle Esser, Danone’s chief research and innovation officer.

The French company is hoping Di Gioia, who has a Ph.D. in food science and master’s degrees in macromolecular materials and environmental engineering, can lend scientific credence to claims that its waters are unique and full of the minerals necessary for optimum hydration. That’s important for Danone’s ability to market the product as premium and for the industry’s reputation for natural purity, which took a hit when Nestlé’s water unit, which owns upscale Perrier, was accused of illegally filtering water to remove contaminants. The water business sales took a hit from the scandal in 2024, falling more than 4%, to 3.2 billion Swiss francs ($3.7 billion), before recovering in recent quarters. (At the time, the company agreed to pay the fine to settle the French probe while making no admission of guilt.) The company is now looking to sell its water unit.

Danone sees the premium segment as an area to expand. Evian rolled out a “prestige” range in France a decade ago, featuring a sleek glass bottle, that has been priced by distributors at almost twice the level of its regular water. In 2022, the brand debuted its first sparkling water.

Other companies are deploying increasingly creative marketing tactics to get consumers to drink more water, from canned H?O company Liquid Death’s punchy pledge to “murder your thirst” to Coca-Cola Co.’s smartwater with actor Jennifer Aniston to promote healthy hydration.

Di Gioia has worked at Danone’s water research unit for more than two decades. While he spends most of his time in the lab, his other duties are public-facing. He speaks at science conferences and trade gatherings and hosts curated tasting sessions with fine-dining restaurateurs, where he pairs Danone’s products with wines and foods on their menus. He draws associations between the taste of water and minerals like calcium and magnesium that are absorbed as it passes through the limestone of the French Alps.

“I have many hats,” he says. “I have my background, my expertise, plus all the skills of a water sommelier that I need to cultivate.”

© 2026 Bloomberg

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